All in all it was a pretty terrible announcement. Ballmer came on with a prototype, had no pricing or availability to offer, had a half finished 17 second ad from HP to show and then did a demo that looked bad even by “Microsoft Demo” standards. Worse yet he stole Apple’s rumored terminology (“Slate” PCs) making it even clearer that this was a hastily put together attempt to “one up” Apple.

The whole thing was horribly embarrassing and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Microsoft’s stock dropped after the announcement.

But here’s the important part: Microsoft did the exact right thing with this announcement.

Not everyone can be the cool kid in class and generally when those who aren’t the cool kid succeed it’s because they accept that fact and go with what strengths they do have. Microsoft is never, ever going to out-do Apple in the flash department. That’s historically been the case and that’s almost certainly not going to change.

If Microsoft wants to get back to the success they had in the past they have to do two things in regards to Apple.

1. Be Good Enough

2. Be Cheaper

That’s how Microsoft wins, that’s how Microsoft has always won and that’s how they’ll win in the future. As horrible as last night’s announcement was it did one important thing which is to tell consumers that Microsoft will also be in the “Slate” market.

Steve Ballmer was basically up there saying “Look, if that Apple tablet looks too darn expensive you can do everything it can do with this Windows 7 based tablet [albeit in a much less refined package]”

So in my book yesterday was a success for Microsoft even though it didn’t look like it at the time. Apple will always seem cooler and the Internet News and Blog sites will always spend more digital ink praising Apple. Again, that’s always been the case. But Microsoft always made more money and if they can get a “slate” out the door that fills the two requirements I outlined above I think they’ll continue to make more money in the future.

the "slate" terminology for tablet PCs without a keyboard has been common since 2001.

contextfree

January 8. 2010 09:39

@contextfree - I don't doubt you but I watch tech news pretty closely and only remember seeing it in wide use after the discovery of the iSlate domain. So even if it was used before I think a lot of people will see it as Microsoft trying to copy Apple. But as I said in the post I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that.

I admire the valuable information you offer in your articles. I will bookmark your blog and have my children check up here often. I am quite sure they will learn lots of new stuff here than anybody else!

About Me

Not really relevant right now. This blog is on hiatus. I really haven't decided if it is an indefinite hiatus yet

For the record if you've tried to e-mail me over the last 4 to 6 months I didn't mean to ignore you. The e-mail forwarding isn't working and I didn't realize that until months worth of e-mails had been deleted on forward. The tom@tomstechblog.com address still won't forward to the postmaster account and I don't know why because it's provided by the webhost. But if you're one of my old blog pen pals I would always welcome an e-mail from you at the postmaster@tomstechblog.com address